Canzano: ESPN's Dave Pasch talks Bill Walton (and broadcasting)

A 1-on-1 conversation with Pasch.

Dave Pasch, left, and Bill Walton, worked together on Pac-12 games beginning in 2013.

I miss Bill Walton.

So do a lot of you.

It’s one of the reasons why I reached out to ESPN’s Dave Pasch, his long-time broadcast partner, this week. Pasch and I had a wide-ranging 1-on-1 video conversation on Monday that included some discussion about what it was like to work closely with Walton.

“Bill warmed up like he was preparing to play,” Pasch said. “He would go through his stretching exercises, he would stand up and swing his arms… he’d stretch and try to elongate his spine… he’d have several bottles set up… he’d have a protein shake, he’d have energy chews. He was preparing to go to battle.”

On Walton’s mindset before a broadcast:

“He’d put his headset on,” Pasch said. “We would never rehearse. He wanted it to be completely spontaneous. He’d put his headset on and growl. He would try to push his voice as far as it could go in terms of range. Once he did that, he was ready to go.”

Pasch grew up in Wisconsin, went to college at Syracuse, where he studied in the wake of broadcast legends such as Bob Costas and Marv Albert.

Canzano: Take a book journey with Bill Walton

We talked about the art and science of a good play-by-play broadcast, the abrupt start to the Oregon-Indiana Peach Bowl game (Pasche was on ESPN radio for that one), and, naturally, Pasch told stories about Walton.

That duo worked together on several memorable Pac-12 broadcasts that took on a side-show entertainment value of their own.

“The first game we did was in Eugene,” Pasch said. “It was Arizona at Oregon in January of 2013…. My phone was blowing up the entire game. We get texts a lot, but never like that. I had texts from people I hadn’t heard from in a long time. A lot of people were like, ‘What is going on?!? This is so different.’ It wasn’t for everybody. Not everybody loved it, but there were a lot of people who thought it was interesting and fun and unique.”

I asked Pasch how he knew when to interrupt Walton and redirect the game broadcast. He told a story about ESPN’s Mike Tirico, who gave Pasche some good advice on handling Walton.

“You have to stop him,” Tirico told Pasch. “That’s your job.”

Watch the video:

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